Conversion

Today’s ‘Words to the RetailWise’ are: If you don’t have traffic counters you are missing out on one of the most telling KPI’s there is.

Conversion. The rate at which shoppers are converted into buyers. This usually has a lot to do with sales associate effectiveness.

Without traffic counters, you can’t measure conversion. Unless, of course, you have someone standing at the door counting every person who comes into the store and then do manual calculations to figure it out. That’s not the most efficient way to do things! You can’t know what opportunities were missed.

Conversion is one of the best measures of your sales associate effectiveness. Remember the old saying…”If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” If you are not measuring conversion, you’re missing out on a clear opportunity to coach and train your associates to get more business.

And, further, without traffic counters, how do you know what the opportunities were? You’re looking at a sales or transaction report with lots of information…but you have no idea how good business could have been because you don’t know how many customers came in but didn’t buy anything. Of course, it works the other way, too. Perhaps traffic coming into the store was very low…but your sales associates did a fantastic job and sold to almost everyone. The thing is you just don’t know.

In a convenience store, or a grocery store, you can pretty well expect close to 100% conversion. People coming into those stores are usually there for a specific reason and really aren’t just looking around. You might lose them if you don’t have the item they need, but that isn’t going to happen very often.

But in many other retail stores, it is the sales associates who will engage the customer to find out what their needs are and present merchandise for them to consider.

It’s the sales associate’s skill at building rapport, their depth of product knowledge, their ability to state and explain features andbenefits and to overcome any objections…combined with the customers desire to buy…that will turn the shopper into a buyer.

Many Store Managers and Sales Associates are not in favor of traffic counters….and we’ll discuss the reasons for that, and how to make them comfortable with traffic counters, in another issue of ‘Words to the RetailWise’.

PPS: Early Bird rates still apply to some of the workshops mentioned above. Send an email to: training@dmsretail to inquire.

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